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When it comes to the "Tea Party," the left and its mainstream media have made no secret that they consider it a home for the GOP's backward, racist, clan of dumbos.

But now as they try to find a name for their own mini-rebellion against GOP domination in Washington, they have found that using the "Tea Party" description for their effort is A-OK.

On several news shows last week, CNN, MSNBC and others sounded like Chris Matthews when he asked if the sporadic protests were the "birthing of the left's version of the Tea Party."

Stay abreast of the latest developments from nation's capital and beyond with curated News Alerts from the Washington Examiner news desk and delivered to your inbox.

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We couldn't let the coincidence pass as our Mainstream Media Scream of the week.

Media Research Center Research Director Rich Noyes explains the pick: "Back in 2009, the news media tried to ignore the Tea Party, ridiculed it with filthy jokes about tea-bagging, then smeared it as a racist reaction to America's first black president. But now many of those same journalists are hyping the idea of a left-wing Tea Party, treating the Left's disruptive demonstrations as a righteous reaction to Donald Trump. It's a complete double-standard, and shows how much of the media's so-called 'news' coverage is based on wishful thinking versus honest analysis."

Rating: Four of five screams.

Paul Bedard, the Washington Examiner's "Washington Secrets" columnist, can be contacted at pbedard@washingtonexaminer.com

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Mainstream Media Scream: Smeared 'Tea Party' name OK when it's liberal - Washington Examiner

Donald Trump co-opted the Tea Party platform on the campaign trail and has so far managed to merge the Tea Party movement with "Trumpism."

Lawmakers swept into office during the Tea Party wave recognize that President Trump took the mantle, but Tea Party and like-minded groups warn they stand ready to snatch it back if he strays from the core principles.

"Part of the Tea Party movement has been seeking leadership [and] I think that's what Trump has brought," said Rep. Dennis Ross, R-Fla., who was first elected in 2010. "I think that's probably allowed the Tea Party movement to not be as demanding now that someone is leading them."

"There may not even be a need for it right now," he said, speaking of the Tea Party Caucus that former Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., started in the House. "You've got the bully pulpit by a very vocal, assertive, conservative who is going forward with what he campaigned on, which are essentially the principles the Tea Party campaigned on six years ago."

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Ohio Republican Steve Stivers, who is also a member of the Tea Party class, said the movement was critical to Trump's win.

"They've been a shot in the arm to our party since 2010 that's helped us not only win Congress but the White House now," Stivers said. Trump "picked up a lot of those ideas and may be the standard bearer now for Tea Party groups. They're clearly not at his direction [and] I don't know that they will always defer to the president, but I think the president certainly shares a view with them that I think is going to create a bond over time."

Jenny Beth Martin of the Tea Party Patriots, an umbrella organization for hundreds of local groups, said Trump's inaugural speech sounded themes she wanted to hear.

"He said he was returning power back to the people, which is what the Tea Party advocates," she said. "We empower our local activists."

For now her organization's priorities and Trump's align. For example, the group's main initiative is supporting Trump's Supreme Court nominee, federal Judge Neil Gorsuch. But she does not consider Trump the movement's leader.

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"We still have thousands of leaders around the country who want personal freedom, economic freedom and a debt-free future," she said.

House Rules Committee Chairman Pete Sessions, R-Texas, who co-founded the Tea Party Caucus with Bachmann, said members "are learning our way with Mr. Trump. [He] has ideas about making America great and sometimes we agree with some of those ideas, and sometimes they weren't our first thought. But I think that Mr. Trump should be judged on his performance of the fight and engaging on behalf of the American people."

Jason Pye, Freedom Works' legislative director, said Trump and the Tea Party share some common goals, but they are not one in the same.

"There are going to be times where he's going to want to do something that the grassroots are going to push back against," he said, citing Trump's push for a massive infrastructure project. "We don't have the money. There are likely going to be conflicts."

Rep. Mark Sanford, R-S.C., said "Trumpism" and the Tea Party are just the latest manifestations of conservatives. Whatever it's called, key tenants are supposed to be cutting the deficit and curbing government spending, which seem to have fallen by the wayside since Trump's surprise victory, since the Trump administration is not talking about those issues, Sanford said.

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"I think that's just speculation."

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"We're going to have a big fight on spending in this Congress" because Trump and Republican leaders are pushing initiatives that all have major effects on taxes and spending, he said. That includes overhauling the tax code, repealing the healthcare law, building a border wall and rolling out a huge infrastructure undertaking.

"We have a day of reckoning that's going to bring it back to the forefront based on a demographic time bomb, based on [Congressional Budget Office] projections and simple math," Sanford said. Those realities and their agenda will "spark this debate on spending that I think is coming our way this year."

Barney Keller, a Republican strategist previously with the Club for Growth, said voters who were drawn to the Tea Party's message will be "Trump Republicans," as they care about the same issues.

However, "if he takes diametrically opposed stances" from what the Tea Party and conservative Republicans expect, the honeymoon could end abruptly.

"His recent moves certainly give conservatives a lot to be happy about," Keller said.

Al Weaver contributed to this report.

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Its beginning to look a lot like August 2009 in reverse.

In that summer of the Tea Party, conservative activists packed the town-hall meetings of Democratic congressmen and peppered them with hostile questions. It was an early sign of the abiding opposition that Obamacare would encounter, and the prelude to Democratic defeats in 2010, 2014, and 2016.

Now, progressive activists are tearing a page from that playbook. The scenes are highly reminiscent of 2009, with Republican officeholders struggling to control unruly forums and leaving their town-hall meetings early or not holding them in the first place.

The partisan temptation in this circumstance is always to dismiss the passion of the other side, which is what Democrats did to their detriment in 2009 and Republicans are doing now.

Its not often that White House press secretary Sean Spicer sounds like his Obama predecessor Robert Gibbs, but on this, he might as well be reading leftover talking points. Gibbs dismissed the Tea Partys town-hall agitation eight years ago as manufactured anger reflecting the Astro-turf nature of grassroots lobbying. Spicer says of the town-hall protests, Its not these organic uprisings that weve seen through the last several decades the Tea Party was a very organic movement this has become a very paid, Astro-turf-type movement.

What was true in 2009 is true today: In the normal course of things, its not easy even for a well-funded and -organized group to get people to spend an evening at a school auditorium hooting at their congressman. If these demonstrations are happening in districts around the country, attention must be paid.

This is not to condone the more rancid elements of the Lefts ferment (blocking Education Secretary Betsy DeVos from entering a Washington, D.C., school was petty thuggishness), nor is it to consider what is happening as nearly as significant as the Tea Party yet.

To become the Lefts equivalent of the Tea Party, the protestors will have to persist despite the inevitable legislative defeats on the horizon; organize at the grass-roots level; play in Democratic primaries; make their own partys establishment miserable; and pick off a significant Republican seat in what seems like impossible territory, the way Scott Brown did in the Massachusetts special election after the death of Ted Kennedy.

None of this is certain, or necessarily likely. But Democrats deluded themselves in 2009 by disregarding the early signs of fierce resistance to their agenda, and paid the price over and over again for their heedless high-handedness. Republicans shouldnt make the same mistake.

There is nothing to suggest that the Lefts town-hall protesters represent anything like a majority of the country. Even an impassioned plurality can make a big impact, though. And if we have learned anything from the Obamacare debate, it is that disturbing the status quo in American health care carries significant downside political risk. Democrats were in that position in 2009; Republicans are now.

The GOP cant and shouldnt back off their promise to repeal Obamacare. But the party should redouble its commitment to do as much as it can to replace the law simultaneously with its repeal. At the prodding of President Donald Trump, congressional Republicans have been moving in this direction. It behooves the party as a policy and political matter to show that its legislation wont lead to millions of people losing their insurance and wont return to the pre-Obamacare status quo for people with pre-existing conditions.

With a consensus on replacement, Republicans would be much better equipped to push back at contentious town halls, and to potentially defuse at least some of the fear and anger engendered by their health-care agenda. The alternative is to look the other way, avoid town halls, and hope that after the repeal passes everything calms down. This was essentially the Democratic tack in 2009, and how did that work out?

Rich Lowry is the editor of National Review. He can be reached via e-mail: [emailprotected]. 2017 King Features Syndicate

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Heed the Protests - National Review

Video of constituents confronting Utah Rep. Jason Chaffetz and Tennessee Rep. Diane Black, for example, has gone viral on social media and garnered significant mainstream coverage and commentary on issues ranging from Obamacare to President Trump's ethics. Minority party representatives have clearly gotten the message of "no compromise," and some aspects of the majority party's legislative agenda have shown faint signs of stalling. For those who remember the early months of the Obama administration, this all looks rather familiar. Are Trump's opponents forming a "tea party of the left"? My years of research on the tea party suggest that there are valuable lessons for Trump's opponents today, but only if they remember the full scope of tea party activism.

In one sense, anti-Trump activists are ahead of the game. Opposition to Trump has already mobilized vastly more people more quickly than the tea party did. Local grass-roots protests began almost as soon as President Obama was in office in 2009, but these were scattershot affairs, hardly the stuff of a national movement. In the first month, attendees often numbered only in the dozens.

But, as Hillary Clinton can surely attest, having greater numbers is not the same as winning. The rightward shift of the Republican Party was the result not only of the numbers of people who protested Obama, but also the fact that the tea party's grass-roots efforts garnered support from powerful entities like conservative media and well-funded advocacy groups who channeled the energy of the base into particular political institutions and policy priorities. It is not yet obvious which, if any, Democratic institutions will play a similar role on the left.

Conservative media played a critical role in turning small protests into a coherent national movement. The tea party name itself came from a CNBC host, Rick Santelli, who called for a "Chicago tea party" in an on-air rant against President Obama's housing policies. Conservative radio personalities picked up the phrase and hosted many of the early "tea party" protests. By April 2009, Fox News was promoting upcoming tea party protests, now branded as Fox News events and featuring stars like Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck. Fox News hosts did not demand protesters have a clear-cut set of policy demands before deeming them worthy of attention. Instead, they validated and disseminated widely the grass roots' sense of grievance, encouraging the new "tea party" identity. Thanks to Fox News, tea party activists shared the common source of news and narrative critical to a burgeoning political movement.

So in asking whether we're at the cusp of a progressive version of the tea party movement, the question is whether Democrats can organize themselves effectively without the same media echo chamber the tea party had, and whether elements of the Democratic establishment will, as the GOP did, embrace and harness the grass-roots anti-Trump fervor into electoral success.

State legislatures will be one critical battleground to win if this series of protests is to become a coherent and sustainable movement. Like the Republicans in 2008, Democrats find themselves without an obvious national leader; the advantage of this is that it may increase attention to down-ballot races.

Should Democrats succeed in winning in the statehouses, there is another lesson to take from the tea party. Over the last eight years, Republicans focused on legislative initiatives that were ideologically appealing but also electorally strategic. Voter suppression and anti-union legislation are both policies that undercut the political power of traditionally Democratic voting groups: minorities and union workers. Given the opportunity, Democrats would benefit from prioritizing policies that foster inclusion and participation, like automatic voter registration. The best policies build power.

In the enthusiasm of the 2008 election, Barack Obama was hailed as a new FDR, who would pull the country out of economic downturn and build a lasting liberal power in Washington. Barely two years later, that dream seemed a distant memory. Ironically, that defeat has given Democrats today a source of hope -- and perhaps even a game plan. They would do well to look beyond the colorful protests and packed town halls, and remember the full story of the tea party's success.

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Could this be the left's tea party moment? - CNN

"This is a spontaneous and grass-roots uprising of the American people," Bernie Sanders said. | Getty

Sen. Bernie Sanders bristled at the idea that liberal protests against President Donald Trump all over the country are analogous to the protests and demonstrations that marked the beginning of the tea party movement.

"It's not a tea party because the tea party was essentially funded by the billionaire Koch brothers family," Sanders said during an interview with NBC News' Chuck Todd on Sunday on "Meet the Press." "This is a spontaneous and grass-roots uprising of the American people."

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Sanders, a Vermont independent who ran for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2016, went on to say that there would be protests all over the country meant to pressure Republicans to answer questions on repealing and replacing Obamacare.

"On February 25th, two weeks from yesterday, there is in fact going to be rallies all over this country, and I think you're going to see people in conservative areas, in progressive areas, asking the Republicans: 'What are you going to do when you throw 23 million people off of health insurance?'" Sanders said, adding: "'How many of them are going to die? What's your plan when you raise prescription drug costs, on average, $2,000 for senior citizens? Are you really going to repeal the protection against preexisting conditions so that people who have cancer or heart disease will no longer be able to have health insurance? You going to throw kids off of their parents' health insurance programs?'

The tea party movement began in 2009 in opposition to some of the policies of President Barack Obama, including ones that became the Affordable Care Act. The recent protests in favor of the ACA have flipped the script somewhat.

"Republicans are going to have to start to answer those questions, and the American people are pretty clear, overwhelmingly they want to improve the Affordable Care Act, they do not want to simply repeal it," Sanders said.

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Sanders: Protests on left aren't like the tea party - Politico